The Cincinnati Enquirer from Cincinnati, Ohio · Page 8

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THE CINCINNATI ENQUIRER FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 1991 SECTION B TCF EDITOR: KERRY KLUMPE, 369-1003 ETIKOSWE Jf eraaM risks known, comsiltont says Key terms in trial These materials play a central role In the Fernald case: BY BEN L. KAUFMAN and ELIZABETH NEUS The Cincinnati Enquirer A former assistant manager of the Fernald uranium refinery described on Thursday four decades of documents he said should have alerted workers to radiation risks at the facility. With that testimony, Weldon J. Adams laid the groundwork for the company argument that employees knew what they were doing at the government facility in northwest Hamilton County. Adams quoted a 1953 operations manual and a 1978 company newsletter that discussed the handling of thorium, and 1985 newspa per articles about plutonium and radium found in waste sent to Fernald for processing or storage. They were among myriad documents bound in more than 130 4-inch-thick notebooks lining one wall of Judge S. Arthur Spiegel's U.S. District Court in Cincinnati. Adams also said he knew of no study which found increased cancers or risks of cancer among the more than 6,000 men and women who worked at Fernald. And he cited 1985 reports which found no evidence that Department of Energy (DOE) radiation safety standards were violated at Fernald. Adams, a mechanical engineer whose entire career was spent at f ernald, was the first defense wit ness for NLO Inc., which ran the facility from 1951 to 1985, and its parent company, NLI Inc., of Houston. They are defendants in a $500 million suit accusing them of exposing workers to hazardous amounts of radiation and keeping them ignorant of the risks. Spiegel divided the case into two stages. The only issue before jurors now is whether the 1990 suit was filed after statutes of limitations expired. If jurors agree with NLO, that employees were aware of their risks by 1985, the case is over. If, however, jurors agree that NLO kept employees in the dark until late 1988, then the suit was filed before the deadline and the workers can have a second trial at which they present their damage claims. Adams retired after NLO gave up its Fernald contract Dec. 31, 1985, and has been a company consultant on this case and an earlier lawsuit in which Fernald neighbors won a $78 million settlement. The case is the first brought by nuclear weapons workers to reach trial. Whatever happens will affect lawsuits at more than 15 related weapons plants around the country. The trial resumes at 9 a.m. today. URANIUM: The main radioactive material present at Fernald. Uranium ore concentrates were converted at Fernald to "salts," sent to other plants for enrichment to weapons-grade material or metals sent to the Hanford plant in Washington state for conversion to plutonium. Emits primarily alpha radiation, which can be inhaled or ingested and is not absorbed through skin. PLUTONIUM: Highly radioactive and carcinogenic material; one of the primary components in a nuclear warhead. Waste residues sent to Fernald sometimes contained plutonium, but the plant never made or stored it. THORIUM: Material mostly stored at Fernald but at one time processed there. Products of thorium decay are highly radioactive, and radiation can penetrate skin. Murder conspiracy suspect convicted 72, Woman, Warner to remain in prison Shock parole rejected for former financier BY DICK KIMMINS Enquirer Columbus Bureau COLUMBUS, Ohio Former Home State Savings Bank owner Marvin Warner's bid to be released from prison five months into his 3'2-half year sentence failed Thursday. The Ohio Parole Board, in a hearing at the London, Ohio, prison where Warner is serving his sentence, refused to grant the former financier shock parole. t i I w A "He was disappointed, obviously," said Tessa Un-win, assistant communications director for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. The board's decision cannot be appealed. Warner was informed of the board's decision after its meetinc at Madison Correc could face 7 to 25 years BY JOHN R. CLARK The Cincinnati Enquirer Pansy Goins, 72, of Fairfield sat quietly Thursday as a Butler County common pleas jury found her guilty of conspiring to have her former husband's stepson killed in Kissimmee, Fla. The jury deliberated three hours before finding Goins guilty of two counts of conspiracy to commit murder. Judge George H. Elliott set sentencing for Oct. 24. She faces a maximum sentence of seven to 25 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. Goins was charged with hiring someone to kill Scott Goins, of Kissimmee, stepson of her former husband, Carson Goins. She pleaded not guilty and claimed that her adopted son, Greg Goins, proposed the conspiracy, and that she was only echoing his words when she negotiated with an undercover officer for the slaying. John Thompson, an agent for the Drug! Abuse Reduction Task Force (DART) posing as a hit man, testified Pansy Goins gave him a photograph and address of the intended victim and a $500 down payment, with another $500 to be paid later, at a meeting with the defendant June 21 at the Hamilton Plaza Shopping Center parking lot. He said the meeting was arranged by Greg Goins. Thompson said that when he asked Pansy Goins, "You still want him (Scott Goins) killed?" she replied, "Oh, yeah." Tapes of recorded conversations of the defendant with Greg Goins and with the officer, and a videotape of the meeting at which the money was paid were played during the trial. Pansy Goins testified that when she met with Thompson she thought Greg Goins was "being taken" by bikers and that she gave Thompson the money to teach Greg a lesson. She said the money . IT ' 1 " I is , it. 1 if -, . ' . v i s"' ; i f r a Tne Associated PressMichael Snyder tional Institute, where he is Marvin Warner serving a 42-month prison sentence. The earliest Warner can now receive an outright release from prison will be August, 1993, absent any extraordinary action by the parole board. He will be eligible for another hearing before the parole board in December. At that time he could request furlough status. Under a furlough, he would be released to the custody of a halfway house during the day and returned to prison at night, said Sharron Kornegay, spokeswoman for the department of corrections. Ohio Special Prosecutor Lawrence Kane, who won the convictions against Warner and other Home State defendants four years ago, was not surprised by the denial of shock parole. "He has been in prison less than six months; and there are other main principals in this case who have been in prison for four years now," Kane said. "The inequity of giving him shock parole now would be grotesque." Warner's request for shock probation was denied by a Hamilton County court earlier this year. Warner was convicted of nine felonies in Pansy Goins is escorted out of court before a Butler County jury begins deliberations. The Fairfield woman was found guilty Thursday of two counts of conspiracy to commit murder. check Greg Goins' background before-using him as a confidential informant. John McCracken, an assistant county prosecutor, called Pansy Goins "a wise old lady that got caught up in her own plan." Her lawyer, Clayton Napier, charged in closing arguments Thursday that Pansy Goins was duped by her adopted son. "Greg Goins set her up," Napier said. He also accused police of failing to belonged to Greg. Goins denied that she had ever had problems with Scott Goins or that she wanted him dead. She contended the words on the tapes were Greg Goins' and "I just said them, it was just talk." Lewis Center policy under study 1987 stemming from the 1985 collapse of Home State. Warner was convicted of six counts of misapplying Home State funds and three other counts of securities fraud. He was acquitted of 76 other counts in what Hamilton County Common Pleas' Judge Robert Ruehlman at the time labeled the "crime of the century for this community." "The state spent a lot of money to send Marvin Warner to jail and we think he should stay there," Ohio Attorney General Lee Fisher said Thursday. "We are pleased with the parole board's ruling." Enquirer reporter Howard Wilkinson and the Associated Press contributed to this story. Collins' ingenuity praised BY OWEN FINDSEN The Cincinnati Enquirer Richard Collins, 46, artistic director of the Cincinnati Ballet, died Thursday afternoon in involved" in those referrals, Hightower-Leftwich said. "We don't have the final say on who we get. ... We are just a state entity required to provide service. We are looking at the whole process." The investigation stems from a recommendation to Dr. Michael Hogan, the newly appointed director of the Ohio Department of Mental Health, from his staff. Three (Please see LEWIS CENTER, Page B-7) quickly," said Stephanie Hightower-Lef-twich, spokeswoman for the state Department of Mental Health. A five-member team made up of representatives from the state Mental Health Department, Hamilton County Community Mental Health Board and community members will look at who is being referred to the state-run psychiatric hospital from other agencies, she said. "The Lewis Center is not the only entity BY CHRIS GRAVES The Cincinnati Enquirer The state Department of Mental Health along with Cincinnati mental health officials began an investigation Thursday into admission and discharge policies at the Pauline Warfield Lewis Center. "The director says he is concerned about the appropriateness of admissions and discharges and the appropriateness of those people who are discharged very Lexington, Ky., from 'My training just kicked in' to rl head injuries suffered in a one-car ac-c i d e n t Sept. 10. Collins was pronounced dead at i J '""IIS" 0 J) V w "v J 1 passengers off the bus and also heading off what could have turned into something much more serious. "My training just kicked in," Smith said Thursday. "To me, it was like an air crash. It was like a plane without wings." He saw flames shooting from the badly mangled pickup. He knew he had to do something fast. The driver was slumped over the steering wheel; blood was trailing down his neck. "He was dazed. I said, 'Come on, you've got to get out of here.' He was out of it. All he could say was, 'You think my truck can be fixed?' " Smith said. Next, the 28-year-old New Richmond native pushed the bus door open and helped 50 or more children out, making sure the injured got immediate attention while rescue squads were on the way. Seventeen students and the pickup driver all suffered injuries in the 4 p.m. crash on Bethel-New Richmond Road, just down the hill from the elementary school. None required admission to the hospital. Smith lives in Denver, where he has worked for Continental Airlines for five years. He is a flight service manager, the leading attendant on a flight. Although never in a crash, he has experienced emergency landings and severe turbulence. "He got them off, got the driver out and got an extinguisher. ... I'm glad he had the training," said New Richmond Police Chief Harold Kennedy. Said Smith: "It was just like my job as a flight attendant. ... I'm not a hero or anything like that." Truck driver chargedB-4 Flight attendant uses safety skills in bus rescue BY JIM CALHOUN The Cincinnati Enquirer He heard the boom and then the panicky cries of little children, and Tony Smith didn't hesitate not even long enough to pull on his shoes. Still in his stocking feet, he sprinted from his parents' New Richmond home and onto the rainy street where a pickup had crashed into the side of a full school bus Wednesday afternoon. Smith, an airline flight attendant who was home visiting his sick father, is credited with leading screaming, hysterical and injured Richard Collins 2:35 p.m. Thursday at the University of Kentucky Medical Center in Lexington, where he was taken after the accident on Interstate 75 near Berea, Ky. Preliminary cause of death was given as a head injury from a motor vehicle accident, said Charles Howell II, Lexington-Fayette, Ky., deputy coroner. An autopsy will be held this afternoon in Lexington. (Please see COLLINS, Page B-7) The Cincinnati EnquirerCathy A. Lyons" Tony Smith of Denver, a flight attendant with Continental Airlines, helped evacuate a packed school bus after a crash Wednesday. "It '. was just a natural reaction," Smith said. 1